That was a bad night. The Boche mine had caught our R.E.’s this time. All the night through they were rescuing fellows from our mine gallery. Seven or eight were killed, most of them “gassed”; two of “A” Company were badly gassed too while aiding in the rescue work. This mine gas is, I suppose, very like that encountered in coal mines; and the explosion of big charges of cordite must create cracks and fissures underground that release these gases in all directions. I do not profess to write as an expert on this. At any rate they were all night working to get the fellows out. One man when rescued disobeyed the doctor’s strict injunctions to lie still for half an hour before moving away from where he was put, just outside the mine shaft; and this cost him his life. He hurried down the Old Kent Road, and dropped dead with heart failure at the bottom of it. Hills told me he felt the pulses of two men who had been gassed and were waiting the prescribed half-hour; and they were going like a watch ticking. Yes, it was a bad night. I got snatches of sleep, but always there was the sound of stretchers being carried past our dug-out to the doctor’s dressing-station; several times I went out to investigate how things were going. But there was nothing I could do. It was my duty to sleep: we were going up in the line to-morrow. But sleep does not always come to order. Before dawn we “stood to,” and it was quite light as I inspected the last rifle of No. 6 Platoon. They were just bringing the last of the gassed miners down to the dressing-station. I stood at the corner of Park Lane, and watched. The stretcher-bearers came and looked at two forms lying on stretchers close by me; then they asked me if I thought it would be all right to take those stretchers, and leave the dead men there another hour. I said if they wanted the stretchers, yes. So they lifted the bodies off, and went away with the stretchers. There were several men standing about, silent, as usual, in the presence of death. I looked at those two R.E.’s as they lay quite uncovered; grim their faces were, grim and severe. I told a man to get something and cover them up, until the stretcher-bearers came and removed them. And as I strode away in silence between my men, I felt that my face was grim too. I thought of Clark’s description, a few hours back, of the man sitting alone in the white chalk gallery, listening, listening, listening. And now!